David Petraeus: gleeful Taliban ponder correct way to execute adulterer

The sex scandal that brought down David Petraeus poses a tricky dilemma for
his old foes in the Taliban: should an adulterer be stoned to death or
executed by a firing squad made up of his mistress's relatives?

As generals, journalists and military analysts in the United States continue to ponder the national security and political implications of Mr Petraeus's spectacular fall from grace, his affair and resignation have tickled the famously humourless Taliban.

One official burst into laughter at the mention of the Petraeus affair during an interview in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar.

"What a b------! But all Americans are the same, it's nothing new," the official told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

Adulterers suffered severe punishment under the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which ran from 1996 until they were forced from power in 2001. Offenders were flogged in public.

But there is a dilemma for the Talib, balancing the demands of Islamic law against the norms of his conservative Pashtun tribe.